I actually can't believe it's time for another batch of books already, especially since I just finished the January book last night! We have a fun informal book club here at The Lilypad and it's open to anyone and everyone who likes to read! For this thread we are looking for suggestions for what to read together over the next four months. Everyone can suggest one book for now because when I do the voting poll, I can only have 10 selections in the poll. I will leave this thread open until March 1st or until we get 10 suggestions. Then I will open up a voting poll. Once we vote, I'll start a new thread for each of the four top books... one per month, for the next four months starting in April. You can see the complete list of our old picks in our Master Reading List. You can read the books in any order and at any time. If you want to chat about the books, just reply to that thread. Easy peasy! So.... what should we read together next? 1. The Resisters by Gish Jen 2. Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown 3. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig 4. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi 5. A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende 6. Warlight by Michale Ondaajte 7. The Ten Thousand Doors of January 8. The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler 9. 10.
I'll suggest The Resisters by Gish Jen. We could read it in April for the opening of baseball season, hehe! This one comes highly recommended, but I'm not sure the copy here is that compelling. This is the summary... The time: a not-so-distant future. The place: AutoAmerica. The land: half under water. The Internet—the new face of government—is "Aunt Nettie": a mix of artificial intelligence, surveillance technology, and pesky maxims. The people have been divided, and no one is happy. The angel-fair "Netted" still have jobs and literally occupy the high ground, while the mostly coppertoned "Surplus" live on swampland if they're lucky, on the water if they're not. The story: To a Surplus couple—he was a professor, she's still a lawyer—is born a Blasian girl with a golden arm. At two, Gwen is hurling her stuffed animals from the crib; by ten she can hit whatever target she likes with a baseball; her teens find her playing happily in an underground Surplus league. When AutoAmerica re-enters the Olympics—with a special eye on beating ChinRussia—Gwen attracts interest. Soon she's at Net U, falling in love with her coach and considering "crossing over," even as her mother is challenging the AutoAmerican Way with lawsuits that will prove very dangerous. An astonishing story of an America that seems only too possible, and of a family struggling to maintain its humanity in circumstances that threaten their every value—even their very existence.
Cinnamon and Gunpowder https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...r?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=3AMjWEavsD&rank=1 A gripping adventure, a seaborne romance, and a twist on the tale of Scheherazade—with the best food ever served aboard a pirate’s ship The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by the ruthless pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot. He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her every Sunday without fail. To appease the red-haired captain, Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph at sea is actual bread, made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Soon he’s making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider. But Mabbot—who exerts a curious draw on the chef—is under siege. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur hidden on her ship, she pushes her crew past exhaustion in her search for the notorious Brass Fox. As Wedgwood begins to sense a method to Mabbot’s madness, he must rely on the bizarre crewmembers he once feared: Mr. Apples, the fearsome giant who loves to knit; Feng and Bai, martial arts masters sworn to defend their captain; and Joshua, the deaf cabin boy who becomes the son Wedgwood never had. Cinnamon and Gunpowder is a swashbuckling epicure’s adventure simmered over a surprisingly touching love story—with a dash of the strangest, most delightful cookbook never written. Eli Brown has crafted a uniquely entertaining novel full of adventure: the Scheherazade story turned on its head, at sea, with food.
I just read this one because the Buccaneers won the Super Bowl (I had a little book super bowl going), ha! It was great!
That's cool! I thought you meant modern day pirates. Those scare me. My in-laws are planning on buying a boat and sailing the Caribbean for the next few years and they talk about stories of pirates that are more terrifying than exciting! Especially since we're hoping to sail with them for a few weeks next summer!
Oh WOW...I didn't know there are still pirates around...Hopefully they stay far away from your family <3
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...y?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Vt5HYryFyD&rank=1
That's kinda what I thought at first too! I'm glad they were modern day pirates! @FarrahJobling It's pretty cool that they find some OLD pirates though!
YES! I've had that on my hold list for a long while. I think it's almost my turn too! I'll be voting for this one for sure!
I'm going to throw Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi on the list too. I finished it recently and it was so fascinating! It follows the family tree of two different women born in the same area of Ghana. One family tree stays in Africa and one leads to America. Each chapter is a new "branch of the family tree" towards modern times.
The Midnight Library is on my tbr list! I'll vote for that one! I read Homegoing at the end of 2020 - sooo good!
I just had a browse through the Good Reads website and saw the section - Historical Fiction and found this one that might be good to read. A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende
This was the last thing I added to my TBR's at the library based on the blurb, it's from the middle of last year I think but, again, if someone can check is this available overseas https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/52768989-the-mother-fault#
My Suggestion Warlight by Michale Ondaajte While I never read The English Patient but saw the movie years ago, this one got some reviews as awful but I absolutely loved it. This American can never be sure about the Booker prize winners/authors - some are very special and others I just wonder if they are too deep for me. 1945 post war Britain, two young people who appear to be abandoned by their upper class parents and 'cared for' by a rather strange man. I found this book amazingly lyrical but still a very clear story. There were times I just wanted to dwell on one beautifully written sentence or stop and visualize an image. There are lots of WWII books out now but this is one of the most beautiful ones I've read.